- Collection:
- Civil Rights History Project
- Title:
- Roberta Alexander oral history interview conducted by David P. Cline in San Diego, California, 2016 June 29
- Contributor to Resource:
- Alexander, Roberta, 1946- interviewee
Cline, David P., 1969- interviewer
Bishop, John Melville, videographer
Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Date of Original:
- 2016
- Subject:
- Black Panther Party
Congress of Industrial Organizations (U.S.)
Free Speech Movement (Berkeley, Calif.)
African American women civil rights workers--California--Interviews
Civil rights movements--California
Civil rights movements--United States
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements - Location:
- United States, 39.76, -98.5
United States, California, 37.25022, -119.75126
United States, California, San Diego County, San Diego, 32.71571, -117.16472 - Medium:
- personal narratives
interviews
oral histories (literary genre)
video recordings (physical artifacts) - Type:
- MovingImage
- Description:
- Dr. Roberta Alexander, Professor Emeritus at San Diego City College, talks about her family background in California, her mixed-race heritage, and activist roots, including her time with the Black Panther Party.
Recorded in San Diego, California, on June 29, 2016.
Civil Rights History Project collection (AFC 2010/039: 0142), Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Copies of items are also held at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (U.S.).
Roberta Alexander was born in 1946 in Berkeley, California. As a college student in the Bay Area, she was arrested in the Free Speech movement protests in 1964, and then kicked out of Francoist Spain for protesting the Vietnam War there in 1967. She joined the Black Panther Party and was in the party for one year in the late sixties. Among her assignments was one that called for her to go Japan in 1969 with Elbert "Big Man" Howard to speak at rallies and demonstrations in Japan by organizations protesting the Vietnam War. She took her activism into teaching and taught Reading, Composition, Literature, Chicano Studies, and Black Studies as well as English as a Second Language courses for the San Diego Community College District beginning in 1974. She is a labor activist and delegate for the AFT Guild, Local 1931. Dr. Alexander earned her BA in Spanish Literature from University of California, Berkeley and her PhD in Comparative Literature from University of California, San Diego. Her son, also an activist teacher and a Muslim, leads inter-faith workshops and initiatives in San Diego.
The Civil Rights History Project is a joint project of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture to collect video and audio recordings of personal histories and testimonials of individuals who participated in the Civil Rights movement.
In English.
Finding aid http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/eadafc.af013005 - Metadata URL:
- http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afc2010039.afc2010039_crhp0142
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Collection is open for research. To request materials, please contact the Folklife Reading Room at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/folklife.contact
- Extent:
- 9 video files (Apple ProRes 422 HQ, QuickTime wrapper) (02:10:06) : digital, sound, color.
transcript 1 item (.pdf) : text files. - Original Collection:
- Civil Rights History Project collection AFC 2010/039: 0142
- Contributing Institution:
- American Folklife Center
- Rights:
-
